Ball catchers are known in the art as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,735,548 and US 2010/0236782. Their purpose is to stop balls blown through ball seats above from going further downhole and preventing operation of equipment further downhole, flow, or the ability to introduce other tools further downhole. One way to accomplish at least some of these objectives is to be able to store the captured balls in a volume outside the main passage. One device that captures a single ball outside a main passage is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,920,930, where the ball seat has a swing-away feature with the landed ball that, when swung, gets out of the main passage. A sleeve is then pushed down to trap the ball and the seat in a surrounding annular space while leaving the main passage open. The limitation of this device is that it can handle only one ball so if there are multiple balls involved, then multiple ball catchers each having a seat to accept a different sized ball is needed. In fracturing applications, there can be as many as dozens of balls blown through seats that need to be captured, making this device impractical for space and cost reasons.
More recently, another idea is described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,118,101 which can handle multiple balls of different sizes but uses an axially movable biased sleeve with a restriction in the main passage. Smaller balls than the restriction will just go through. The through passage is at all times restricted limiting further downhole operation or the delivery of tools to locations below the catcher.
The present invention presents a ball catcher actuated with displacement of a biased sleeve to force a diverter to the diverting position. As applied pressure is relieved by blowing a seated ball through a seat, other balls landed above the seated ball also make the trip through the seat and are diverted into an annular catch volume by a diverter held in a diverting position by continuing flow through the sleeve. As the flow through the sleeve is reduced or removed, a torsion spring returns the diverter to the open main passage position. These and other aspects of the present invention will be more readily apparent from a review of the detailed description of the preferred embodiment and the associated drawings while recognizing that the full scope of the invention is to be determined by the appended claims.